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FALSE  AliABMS  AND  REAL  DANGERS. 


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UNWtHSltV  Of  itUNOtS. 

HON.  GEORGE  M^ILLARD 


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VERMONTVILLE,  MICHIGAN 


JULY  3d,   1875. 


BATTLE  CREEK,  MICH.: 
JOURNAL  STEAM  BOOK  AND  JOB  PRINT, 

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ORATION. 


Mr.  Ppesident  and  Fellow  Citizens  : 

He  that  speaks  on  this  birthday  ot  the  nation,  finds  it  difficult  to 
avoid  the  routine  of  patriotic  commonplace.  But  in  the  presence 
of  an  intelligent  and  thoughtful  population  lilce  the  one  represented 
in  this  assemblage,  to  pursue  a  line  of  discussion  that  is  not  practi- 
cal and  which  has  neither  the  merit  of  freshness  nor  of  utility, 
would  seem  rather  to  cheapen  than  to  honor  the  day  we  celebrate. 
That  it  is  within  the  compass  of  my  ability  to  meet  this  require- 
ment, is  more  than  I  could  venture  to  promise  ;  but  your  demand 
should  be  the  measure  of  my  willingness  to  make  an  effort.  The 
memories  and  associations  of  the  day  speak  with  a  more  significant 
emphasis  and  with  a  grander  eloquence  than  I  can  summon  to  my 
aid  ;  but  their  sublime  inspiration  I  would  invoke,  that  it  may,  at 
this  time,  fill  our  minds,  elevate  our  conceptions,  purify  our  mo- 
tives and  give  clearness  to  our  vision,  that  we  may  see  and  meet  the 
imperative  obligations  laid  upon  us  as  citizens  of  this  American 
Republic. 

OUR  FIRST   CENTURY. 

To-day.  fellow  citizens,  we  step  upon  the  threshold  of  the  year 
which  is  to  close  the  first  century  of  our  history  as  a  nation.  That 
history,  I  need  not  say,  has  been  an  eventful  one — eventful,  whether 
we  look  at  the  momentous  incidents  which  have  marked  our  nation- 
al career,  or  at  the  revolutions  which  have  been  witnessed  among 
the  other  great  communities  of  the  earth.  The  Republic,  from 
comparative  obscurity  among  the  nations,  has  become  conspicuous 
by  its  achievement,  and  still  more  by  the  impression  which  men 
have  of  its  destiny.  From  a  feeble  and  derided  infancy  which 
promised  a  doubtful  future  to  its  friends,  and  afforded  the  expec- 
tation of  sure  triumph  to  its  enemies,  it  has  grown  to  a  manhood 
which,  in  its  strength  and  vigor,  if  it  does  not  win  universal  favor, 
at  least  compels  universal  admiration. 

PROMINENT  features  OF  THE    ERA. 

Since  our  nation  began,  great  changes  have  been  wrought  in  the 
political  aspect  of  the  old  world.     The  map  of  Europe   has    been 

741377 


again  and  again  reconstructed.  States  and  kingdoms  have  exem- 
plified the  too  common  instability  of  human  institutions  and  the 
insufficiency  of  the  basis  upon  which  political  societies  are  too  fre- 
quently founded.  Still  these  changes  and  revolutions  have  not  been 
such  as  to  cause  regret  or  to  arouse  distrust.  The  period  which 
comprises  our  national  record,  has  been  the  world's  bright  particu- 
lar period  of  growth  in  material  prosperity,  in  social  enlighten- 
ment and  in  substantial  civilization.  Science  and  the  arts  have  not 
merely  advanced,  but  they  have  assumed  new  and  unwonted  thea- 
tres for  the  exhibition  of  their  capabilities,  and  have  so  fully  de- 
veloped into  new  and  higher  forms  of  organized  utility,  that  they 
are  to  be  no  longer  recognized  by  their  former  features  and  out- 
lines. Industry  has  secured  a  marvelous  multiplication  of  the  in- 
struments required  for  the  accomplishment  of  its  results.  Business 
has  discovered  far  ampler  and  more  remunerative  fields  for  the  dis- 
play of  its  energies,  and  has  extendied  its  dominion  by  wholly 
novel  and  hitherto  unused  modes  of  conquest. 

Thus,  while  the  Republic  enters  upon  the  one  hundreth  year  of 
its  existence,  with  a  conscious  developement  of  it  own  powers  and 
resources,  it  finds  that  the  outside  world,  in  the  meanwhile,  has 
been  far  from  remaining  stationary.  The  growth  of  the  nation's 
faculties  and  the  developement  of  its  own  interior  political  system, 
have  been  coincident  with  an  altered  phase  of  human  society  else- 
where. This  growth  of  the  Republic  has  of  necessity  involved  the 
formation  of  new  links  of  intercourse  and  the  assumption  of  new 
responsibilities  in  its  inevitable  relation  to  a  world  which,  in 
thought,  in  modes  of  action,  in  the  boldness  of  its  undertakings,  in 
the  reach  and  sweep  of  its  enterprise,  in  its  ambition  for  grand  and 
succfessful  achievement,  in  its  steady  measurement  of  the  utility  of 
theory  by  the  results  of  practice,  has  been  revolutionized  since  the 
memorable  day  on  which  our  fathers  staked  their  lives,  their  for- 
tunes and  their  sacred  honor  for  liberty  and  independence,  and, 
in  the  unselfishness  of  their  devotion,  opened  a  new  chapter  and 
fixed  a  new  era  in  the  history  of  mankind. 

WORK  OF  THE  PAST  CENTURY — ORGANIZATION. 

In  the  century  now  closing,  the  really  great  questions  with  which 
the  nation  has  been  required  to  grapple,  have  been  those  of  organ- 
ization. This  work  may,  however,  be  now  regarded  as  complete. 
The  Republic  is  now  established  upon  the  foundations  of  sectional 
harmony  and  universal  liberty.  The  chief  causes  which  gave  sus- 
picion of  its  imperfection,  have,  fortunately,  been    removed.    The 


struggles  of  the  last  ten  years  have  crowned  our  national  temple 
with  its  finishing  arch,  and  men  may  no  longer  say  that  here  is  a 
partially  completed  structure.  The  critics  of  other  lands  can  no 
more  exclaim,  'Here  a  nation  began  to  build,  but  was  unable  to 
finish ;'  for  they  behold  that  from  foundation  stone  to  dome, 
nothing  has  been  omitted  that  would  render  it  a  fitting  abcde  of 
freedom  ;  a  place  where  all  men  may  find  citizenship,  and  may 
learn  that  citizenship  also  invariably  implies  fraternity. 

The  sources  of  sectional  discord  which,  hidden  or  operative, 
have  existed  since  the  formation  of  the  Union,  have  been  eradi- 
cated. No  root  of  sectional  bitterness  remains  in  fact,  or  can  much 
longer  remain  in  imagination.  The  animosides  of  the  late  war 
have  been  overwhelmed  by  the  successive  waves  of  patriotic  aspir- 
ation and  fraternal  sentiment,  which  have  swept  over  the  land  du- 
ring the  decade  that  has  since  elapsed ;  ^nd  now,  in  this  centenni- 
al year  of  the  Republic,  in  the  mighty  upswelling  of  the  flood  of 
union  feeling  in  every  section  of  the  country,  there  comes  the 
fluctus  decumanus,  as  the  Romans  termed  the  tenth  wave,  which, 
with  more  volume  and  steadier  force  than  all  the  rest,  will  bury  be- 
neath its  whelming  tide  every  obstacle  to  union  and  every  disposi- 
tion to  prolong  a  strife  which  has  no  rational  motive  or  even  sig- 
nificance. 

WORK  OF  THE  NEXT  CENTURY — DEVELOPEMENT. 

But  if  the  first  century  of  cur  history  has  been  the  period  of  or- 
ganization, we  may  so  far  lift  the  veil  of  the  future  as  to  enable  us 
to  predict  that  the  century  upon  which  we  are  next  to  enter  will  be 
the  period  of  development.  The  completion  of  the  structure  will 
be  followed  by  fitting  it  more  fully,  and  in  all  its  parts,  for  its  des- 
tined use.  Hence  the  national  questions  that  now  require  our  at- 
tention are  not  those  which  concern  the  rights  of  the  citizen,  but 
those  which  relate  to  the  means  for  providing  and  diffusing  the 
agencies  of  a  common  prosperity.  They  do  not  so  much  relate  to 
the  constitutional  guarantees  of  State  and  individual  equality — for 
these  are  settled — but  to  methods  for  developing  our  immense  re- 
sources and  to  the  device  of  policies  which  in  securing  to  industry 
a  profitable  return,  shall  widely  and  impartially  distribute  the  prac- 
tical advantages  to  be  gained  from  political  association  in  a  gov- 
ernment like  our  own.  The  American  people,  in  the  future  that 
is  now  upon  them  and  within  the  limits  of  which  they  have  begun 
to  tread,  must  gird  themselves  no  longer  to  solve  the  problems  of 
political  right,  but  the  now  far  more  imperative  problems  of  polit- 
ical economy.     For  if  the  next  century  shall  disclose  a  great  strug- 


gle  in  this  country,  as  it  may,  that  struggle  will  not  have  for  its 
rallying  summons,  the  cry  for  liberty,  but  the  cry  for  bread. 

PAST   AND    FUTURE    DANGERS    UNLIKE. 

From  this  view  of  the  nation's  present  posture,  fellow  citizens, 
the  inference  is  plain  that  the  dangers  which  have  beset  the  Re- 
public in  the  past  are  not  to  be  apprehended  in  the  future.  Alarms  or- 
riginating  in  the  period  of  organization  will  continue  to  be  sounded 
even  after  the  causes  which  gave  rise  to  them  have  become  obsolete. 
On  the  other  hand,  new  and  actual  dangers  which  the  nation,  in 
its  advancement  to  an  untried  experience,  is  called  to  encounter, 
may  be  wholly  overlooked  in  the  din  and  clamor  aroused  by  fears 
founded  in  misapprehension  and  supported  by  sinister  design.  If 
I  shall  be  successful  in  properly  warning  those  that  hear  me  not  to 
permit  these  false  alarms  to  divert  attention  from  the  real  dangers, 
that  lie  before  us,  I  shall  have  accomplished  what  I  chiefly  desire 
in  this  address. 

FORM    OF    GOVERNMENT   NO   CAUSE    FOR    ALARM. 

The  assured  future  of  this  great  Republic  is  of  such  priceless 
value  that  it  is  no  wonder  that  men  make  it  the  subject  of  appre- 
hension. Prominent  among  the  fallacious  fears  which,  at  one  time 
or  another,  have  gained  currency,  is  the  one  suggested  by  our  form 
of  government. 

The  notion  so  prevalent  in  Europe  that  a  popular  government 
contains  within  itself  the  elements  of  its  own  dissolution,  secures 
a  much  too  ready  acquiescence  in  our  country.  The  remark  is  not 
infrequent  here  in  the  North  but  is  still  mare  trite  in  the  South  , 
that  the  nation  needs  a  stronger  government ;  and  by  stronger,  is 
meant  more  conformed  to  the  usages  of  monarchy,  with  the  powers 
of  the  rulers  enlarged,  with  less  of  responsibility  to  the  citizen, 
and  in  brief,  less  popular  and  democratic.  But  where  the  people 
are  intelligent  and  virtuous — and  they  will  be  virtuous  where  they 
are  truly  intelligent — the  democratic  form  of  rule  is  the  strongest 
and  the  most  enduring  that  can  be  devised.  History  yields  no 
proof  of  the  inherent  weakness  of  a  "government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people  and  for  the  people,"  but  invariably  shows  that  when- 
ever Republics  have  been  overborne  by  internal  disaster,  that  dis- 
aster has  arisen  through  a  violation,  or  through  a  partial  and  in- 
complete application  of  republican  principles. 

If  governments  derive  their  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  gov- 
erned, and  if  they  are  strong  in  proportion  to  the  fulness  of  that 
consent,  what  form  of  government  can  be  stronger  than  the  one  in 


which  that  consent  forms  the  exclusive  basis  upon  which  its  main- 
tenance and  continuance  are  made  to  rest  ?  But  we  need  rely 
neither  upon  logical  inference  nor  upon  remote  examples  in  proof 
of  this  position  :  for  in  the  first  century  of  our  history — culmina- 
ting, as  it  does,  in  the  exhibition  of  a  popular  support  more  cor- 
dial and  universal  than  the  world  has  ever  seen  displayed  after  a 
similar  contest — we  have  an  instance  that  popular  responsibility  in 
the  fabric  of  government,  is  not  an  element  of  weakness,  but  an 
element  of  strength.  As  in  the  Hebrew  annals,  republican  Israel 
won  seceding  Benjamin  back  to  the  union,  when  monarchical  Israel 
could  not  avoid  permanent  division  in  the  subsequent  civil  strife, 
so  in  this  nation  the  people  have  triumphed  in  an  effort  in  which 
a  monarch  must  have  failed.  Indeed  so  general  is  the  conviction 
that  the  American  people  have  both  the  motive  and  the  ability  to 
exclusively  manage  their,  own  affairs  for  their  own  welfare,  that  we 
may  dismiss  all  apprehension  suggested  by  our  form  of  government 
as  a  perfectly  groundless  alarm. 

NOR   EXTENSION   OF   POLITICAL   PRIVILEGE. 

The  recent  extension  of  political  power  and  privilege  to  classes 
which  have  not  hitherto  enjoyed  them  is  made  the  occasion  for  re- 
newed fears  concerning  the  stability  of  our  institutions — fears, 
however,  as  baseless  as  any  terror  ever  conceived  in  the  extrava- 
gance of  childless  fancy.  The  public  safety,  so  far  from  being  en- 
dangered, is  rendered  more  secure  by  the  removal  of  all  barriers 
of  political  distinction  erected  by  the  prejudice  of  race.  To  un- 
justly exclude  any  class  of  men  from  a  share  in  shaping  the  rule 
under  which  they  are  to  live,  is  to  make  them  the  enemies  of  the 
government  instead  of  its  friends.  Their  participation  of  privi- 
lege secures  their  allegiance,  and  the  Republic  is  made  stronger  by 
enlarging  the  area  of  personal  responsibility  upon  which  it  rests 
for  support.  Those  who  nurture  a  solicitude  in  regard  to  the  pol- 
icy of  the  nation  in  establishing  equal  civil  rights  and  impartial 
suffrage,  give  a  too  ready  welcome  to  an  apprehension  which  must 
shortly  disappear  before  the  convincing  proof  of  successful  exper- 
iment. 

NOR    DIVERSITY   OF   POPULATION. 

Nor  does  this  extension  derive  increased  cause  for  alarm  from 
the  fact  that  the  nation  is  not  a  homogeneous  people.  The  Repub- 
lic is  all  the  stronger  by  reason  of  the  intertwining  strands  fur- 
ished  by  the  varied  races  of  which  it  is  composed.  The  great  mis- 
take in  the  effort  to  give  durability  to  national  constitutions  has 
been  made  in  the  omission  to  embrace  all  races  and  tribes  under 


8 

one  broad  canopy  of  equal  citizenship.  The  Athenian  democracy 
confined  itself  to  the  limits  of  a  favored  race,  and  it  could  not  sur- 
vive the  rejection  of  the  very  principle  from  which  its  life  was  de- 
rived. The  Roman  Republic  placed  itself  in  the  inevitable  current 
of  a  fatal  destiny  when  it  proposed  arbitrary  dominion,  and  not 
political  incorporation,  as  the  sign  by  which  its  conquests  were 
gained.  Unlike  these  governments,  the  American  Republic  adopts 
a  policy  which,  from  the  imperative  motive  of  self-interest,  if  from 
no  other,  must  inevitably  transform  every  human  shoulder  into  a 
prop  to  sustain  the  constitution,  and  induce  every  citizen,  of  what- 
ever ancestry  or  blood,  to  fly  with  alacrity  to  its  defence. 

Upon  our  shores  have  been  gathered  the  representatives  of  near- 
ly every  nation  of  the  old  world,  not  alone  of  Europe,  but  of  Africa 
and  Asia.  We  have  among  us  the  fortitude,  the  endurance,  the  enter- 
prise of  the  Saxon  race;  the  inflexibility,  determination  and  reso- 
lution of  the  Teutonic ;  the  vivacity,  sprightliness  and  generosity 
of  the  Celtic ;  while  in  some  portions  of  the  country,  more  espe- 
cially at  the  extreme  south,  there  is  an  admixture  of  the  mobility, 
gayety  and  impulsiveness  of  the  Latin  race,  derived  by  emigration 
from  Southern  EiTrope.  To  these  we  may  add  the  qualities  with 
which  nature  has  endowed  those  who  trace  their  origin  from  civi- 
lizations still  more  diverse,  and  who  shall  say  that  they,  as  well  as 
the  rest,  do  not  contribute  characteristics  which  shall  be  of  ser- 
vice in  maintaining  this,  our  stronghold  of  universal  freedom  ?  The 
prejudices  and  interests  of  the  one  class  will  be  counterbalanced  by 
the  prejudices  and  interests  of  another ;  and  the  erroneous  views 
and  predilections  incident  to  the  race  characteristics  or  traditions 
of  any  one  portion  of  the  population  will  find  a  sufficient 
antidote  and  correction  in  the  precisely  contrary,  but  equally 
fallacious  conclusions  of  another  portion  ;  so  thai  in  this  wide  ex- 
tension of  liberty  and  equal  toleration,  our  political  machinery  will 
be  endued  with  the  power  of  self-adjustment,  and  its  chances  of 
l^erpetuity  proportionately  enhanced.  Every  cry  which  men's  fears 
may  raise  against  the  political  equality  of  race  is  beyond  contra- 
diction, fellow  citizens,  an  entirely  false  alarm. 

NOR  EXTENT  OF  TERRITORY. 

Another  somewhat  similar  apprehension  is  that  suggested  by  our 
wide  extent  of  territory.  Since  our  recent  troubles  were  sectional, 
it  is  quite  natural  that  public  attention  should  be  vdirected  to  a  fea- 
ture which  has  not  unfrequently  been  the  cause  for  the  dismember- 
ment and  dissolution  of  empires.  The  functions  of  government, 
operating  over  a  territory  so  vast,  with  many  of  its  parts  so  remote 


from  the  governing  centre,  are  thought  to  be  incapable  of  effecting 
their  design,  while  diversity  of  interest  on  the  part  of  the  governed 
only  adds  to  the  intensity  of  the  evil. 

But  it  should  be  remembered  that  under  the  American  constitu- 
tion, the  most  important  powers  of  government,  the  disposal  of 
questions  of  the  most  vital  interest,  the  determination  and  decision 
of  subjects  concerning  which  communities  or  individuals  are  apt  to 
become  involved  in  controversy,  are  left  to  State  and  local  author- 
ties ;  and  only  in  a  few  justifiable  exceptions  clearly  pointed  out  in 
the  nation's  supreme  law,  can  be  ever  brought  within  the  province 
of  national  administration.  The  responsibility  of  adjusting  these 
questions  being  thus  removed  from  the  general  government,  there 
is  no  occasion  for  its  exercise  of  those  functions  which  distance  im- 
pairs, or  for  incurring  the  jealousy  and  hostility  engendered  by  di- 
verse sectional  interests. 

Indeed,  the  late  perilous  contest  through  which  the  nation  has 
passed,  though  a  sectional  one,  did  not  spring  either  from  the  ex- 
tent or  the  diversity  of  the  domain  embraced  by  the  Republic. 
That  contest  may  have  been  territorial  in  its  occurrence,  but  was 
not  territorial  in  its  cause.  It  was  produced  by  an  irreconcilable 
diversity  of  institutions,  not  by  any  parallels  of  latitude  or  lines  of 
longitude.  But  if  territorial  diversity  did  not  cause  the  rebellion, 
it  was  territorial  tenacity  which  prevented  its  success.  The  Mis- 
sissippi river  demanded  an  integrity  of  American  territory  through 
which  its  waters  might  pass  to  the  sea,  and  thus  the  impelling  force 
of  popular  sentiment,  suggested  by  the  idea  of  the  national  domain 
which  embraces  nearly  everything  truly  valuable  on  this  North 
American  continent,  enabled  us  to  save  for  ourselves  and  our  chil- 
dren, an  inheritance  of  freedom  which,  through  other  causes,  had 
been  well  nigh  lost.  They  are  false  prophets,  therefore,  who  would 
excite  alarm  from  this  beneficent  circumstance  which  has  but  just 
now  proved  to  be  our  salvation.  Our  diversity  of  soil  and  climate, 
our  numerous  lakes  and  rivers,  with  our  railways  and  other  chan- 
nels of  intercommunication,  and  all  the  varied  agencies  of  com- 
mercial intercourse,  interlocking  the  entire  country  in  a  perfectly 
indissoluble  net-work  of  enduring  ligatures,  are  all  so  many  argu- 
ments for  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  and  so  many  guarantees 
and  sponsors  for  its  perpetuity. 

NOR  INCREASE  OF  WEALTH. 

The  increase  of  wealth  is  another  occasion  of  false  alarm.  There 
is  a  popular  notion  that  the  accumulation  of  capital  endangers  the 
national  safety.     Republics  are  supposed  to  be  undermined  by  lux- 


lO 

ury,  and  luxury  is  regarded  as  the  necessary  consequent  of  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth.  But  let  me  say,  fellow  citizens,  that  poverty  is 
no  protection  to  liberty,  and  that  freedom  and  financial  prosperity 
are  invariably  associated.  Besides  this,  every  dollar  earned  by  the 
honest  citizen  is  an  additional  pledge  of  his  fealty  to  the  govern- 
ment in  securing  to  him  the  right  to  possess  and  enjoy  what  he  has 
obtained ;  so  that  loyalty  gains  an  added  strength  from  pecuniary 
investment.  The  outlay  of  the  products  of  industry  all  over  the 
land,  increasing  in  our  country  from  year  to  year,  as  gained  from 
the  farms,  the  workshops,  the  mines,  the  looms,  the  furnaces,  and 
all  the  varied  sources  of  our  increasing  wealth,  are  daily  and  hourly 
weaving  those  golden  bands  that  bind  this  mighty  nation  into  one 
united  whole,  and  give  a  promise  of  its  future  in  which  no  mere 
sentimental,  croaking  alarmist  shall  be  able  to  shake  our  faith. 

REAL  DANGERS  UNNOTICED. 

But,  fellow  citizens,  while  the  air  is  filled  with  these  false  alarms, 
and  while  evils  wholly  imaginary  form  the  staple  of  political  agita- 
tion, we  should  not  too  readily  felicitate  ourselves  that  the  future 
pathway  of  the  nation  is  wholly  void  of  peril.  Alarmists  repeat 
the  old  warnings  and  endeavor  to  revive  the  distrusts  and  anxie- 
ties of  a  past  period,  but  we  may  be  assured  that  our  dangers  are 
of  an  entirely  different  sort.  They  are  not  the  kind  to  excite  pop- 
ular attention  or  to  awaken  popular  solicitude.  They  are  neither 
striking  in  their  aspect  nor  imposing  in  their  menace,  and  may 
be  classified  among  the  things  that  come  not  by  observation.  Nev- 
ertheless they  will  soon  be  mure  obvious,  and  will  develope  into 
the  most  conspicuous  objects  within  our  political  horizon. 

THE  SPECIAL  DANGER  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

These  dangers  all  bear  relation  to  a  possible  result,  to  provide 
against  which  American  statesmanship  should  summon  its  foresight 
and  wisdom.  The  effort  to  organize  and  complete  a  government 
of  equal  liberty  and  impartial  law,  only  found  its  final  triumph  af- 
ter a  four  years'  sectional  contest,  whose  record  was  marked  with 
desolation  and  traced  in  blood.  But  if  another  war  shall  shake 
this  continent  and  put  in  jeopardy  our  free  institutions,  let  me  tell 
you,  fellow  citizens,  that  it  will  not  be  a  war  of  sections  ;  it  will 
not  involve  an  array  of  the  South  against  the  North,  or  of  the  West 
against  the  East ;  it  will  not  arise  from  any  difficulties  growing  out 
of  sectional  hostility  or  sectional  prejudice  ;  but  if  the  second  cen- 
tury of  the  Republic  shall  find  a  serious  interruption  of  domestic 
tranquillity,  and  shall  open  another  page  of  carnage,  it  will  be  from 


II 

a  cause  of  which  even  the  most  superficial  observation  cannot  fail 
to  give  us  a  glimpse  ;  it  will  be  from  an  evil  with  which  we  now 
see  France  forced  to  contend  in  a  desperate  effort  for  her  self  pres- 
ervation, and  which,  in  various  phases  in  other  lands,  seeks  to  blot 
out  some  of  the  most  valuable  guarantees  of  individual  right,  to  de- 
stroy the  bulwarks  which  protect  the  individual  possession  of 
property,  to  overturn  the  foundations  of  individual  liberty  as  se- 
cured by  law,  and,  in  brief,  to  subject  personal  freedom  and  per- 
sonal acquisitions  to  the  disposal  of  those  who  have  resolved  that 
their  most  expeditious  way  of  obtaining  what  they  need,  is  by  rapine 
and  force.  Should  war  raise  his  wrinkled  front  and  sound  his 
dread  alarums  in  our  country,  either  in  our  day  or  in  that  of  our 
children,  it  will  be  the  offspring  of  that  central  evil  of  the  future 
— the  evil  of  Communism.  The  subordinate  dangers  that  lead  to 
this  one  great  peril  ought  not  to  escape  observation. 

THE  DANGER  FROM  PARTY  PATRONAGE. 

One  subsidiary  danger  relates  to  administration.  It  consists  in 
the  threatened  subversion  of  a  distinctive  principle  of  free  govern- 
ment, and  forces  itself  upon  public  notice  in  the  prevalent  method 
of  making  executive  appointments. 

It  is  an  essential  maxim  of  political  wisdom  that  the  three  great 
departments  of  government,  the  Executive,  the  Legislative  and  the 
Judicial  should  be  distinct.  The  duties  of  each  should  be  dis- 
charged without  interference  from  either  of  the  others.  But  this 
maxim  is  disregarded.  The  members  of  the  national  legislature, 
by  a  vicious  and  dangerous  usage,  have  intruded  upon  the  prerog- 
atives which  the  constitution  expressly  assigned  to  t.ie  Executive 
of  the  nation,  and  by  assuming  to  recommend  candidates,  they  vir- 
tually become  the  instruments  through  which  official  positions  are 
secured.  To  say  nothing  of  the  evil  of  placing  individual  members 
of  Congress  and  the  heads  of  the  several  Executive  departments 
and  bureaus  under  an  obligation  for  reciprocity  of  favors,  and  thus 
exposing  them  to  the  temptation  of  subordinating  duty  to  personal 
interest,  there  is  the  still  greater  and  more  momentous  hazard  of 
placing  the  government  under  the  control  and  dominion,  not  of 
the  constitutional  rulers  acting  under  constitutional  forms,  but  of 
that  monstrous  aggregation  of  irresponsibility  which,  in  all  coun- 
tries, is  too  often  developed  under  the  form  of  party. 

In  our  Republic,  this  evil  is  the  greater,  for  the  reason  that  party 
is  here  more  potent  than  among  European  nations,  since  it  con- 
trols, not  alone  the  selection  of  officials  in  the  legislative,  but  also 
in  the  executive  branch  of  the  government.      In   Great  Britain, 


12 

only  the  members  of  the  Legislature  are  elected ;  the  Executive 
head  of  the  nation  is  not  dependen  t  upon  party  for  his  position. 
With  us,  both  are  elective,  and  more  frequently  than  otherwise, 
owe  their  existence  to  the  same  partisan  origin  and  support.  The 
natural  tendency,  therefore,  to  a  lack  of  independence,  on  the  part 
of  each,  is  sufficiently  great  without  increased  inducement.  This 
lends  additional  weight  to  the  caution  of  removing,  so  far  as  possi- 
ble, the  responsibility  of  making  executive  appointments,  beyond 
the  immediate  and  direct  influence  of  party  dictation,  and,  by  con- 
sequence, beyond  Congressional  control.  It  is  this  consideration 
which  leads  to  the  demand  for  a  thorough,  practical  reform  of  the 
civil  service.  The  knowledge  of  an  evil  so  injurious  to  honest  and 
efficient  administration,  induces  regret  that  the  accomplishment  of 
the  reform  should  be  deferred. 

FROM  CORRUPT  ELECTIONS. 

Intimately  allied  with  this  danger,  both  in  origin  and  result,  is 
the  alarming  increase  of  the  use  of  money  in  our  elections.  Bribery 
and  the  open  purchase  of  votes  may  be  rare,  but  who  does  not 
know  that  even  in  our  own  commonwealth,  where  this  evil  has  been 
comparatively  unworthy  of  notice,  money  is  becoming  a  much  too 
frequent  and  efficient  instrument  in  the  political  canvas.  This 
agency  may  not  yet  have  reached  that  measure  of  imperial  dictation 
which,  in  the  decline  of  Roman  liberty,  enabled  the  poet  Ovid  to 
declare,  ^^dat  census  konores,'"  "it  is  the  tax  roll  that  confers  hon- 
ors," but  there  is  enough  of  the  danger  visible  to  induce  a  free  and 
intelligent  people,  who  desire  to  maintain  their  liberties  and  pre- 
serve their  institutions,  to  guard  against  an  agent  which  fraud  and 
ambition  are  only  too  ready  to  enlist  in  their  service.  Parties  are 
essential  to  the  national  welfare.  It  requires  effort  to  sustain  and 
conduct  them,  but  when  a  purchased  ballot  shall  be  their  means  of 
control,  and  official  plunder  shall  be  their  aim,  the  country  be- 
comes endangered  by  a  partyocracy  which  corrupts  the  entire  gov- 
ernment and  hides  every  pillar  of  the  constitution  beneath  its 
deadly  and  corroding  incrustations.  Should  such  a  crisis  come  in 
the  distant  future,  which,  may  heaven  avert,  the  Republic  will  have 
advanced  to  the  very  brink  of  that  dread  abyss  where  it  requires 
no  remarkable  foresight  to  perceive  that  there  would  be  real  danger. 

FROM  AN  EVIL  FINANCIAL  SYSTEM. 

The  next  peril  which  I  shall  mention,  fellow  citizens,  is  the 
financial  one.  The  question  whether  a  dollar  shall  be  a  dollar  is 
one  which  the  American  people  are  required  to  determine,  and  the 
decision  involves  consequences  of  immense  moment.     Let  us  leave 


13 

out  of  the  consideration  all  that  relates  to  commercial  credit,  the 
violation  of  faith,  the  temptation  furnished  for  the  crime  of  na- 
tional repudiation,  the  general  bankruptcy  and  financial  ruin  that, 
sooner  or  later,  must  overtake  a  people  which  bids  adieu  to  a  sound 
financial  basis,  and  content  ourselves  with  a  glance  at  the  effect 
which  a  continued  issue  of  government  paper,  to  be  used  as  money, 
must  have  upon  our  political  system  Setting  aside  the  evident  vio- 
lation of  the  constitution  which  such  an  issue  implies,  and  also  the 
fact  that  statesmen  only  resorted  to  it  under  the  imperative  neces- 
sities of  war,  this  clothing  the  government  with  the  power  to  make 
money  by  merely  placing  a  stamp  upon  paper,  is  fraught  with  a 
peril  whose  magnitude  is  scarcely  within  the  reach  of  human  cal- 
culationf. 

An  essential  security  to  free  government  has  been  sought  in  the 
provision  by  which  the  power  to  impose  taxes  and  to  raise  money 
has  been  restricted  to  the  immediate  representatives  of  the  people. 
It  was  the  transgression  of  this  principle  which  sent  Charles  the 
First  to  the  scaffold.  British  precedents  combine  with  American 
constitutional  law  to  put  a  jealous  guard  around  that  great  bulwark 
of  national  safety  and  popular  freedom.  But  of  what  avail  are  all 
these  efforts  of  persistent  care  and  anxious  watchfulness,  if  the  gov- 
ernment, under  the  thousand  quibbling  pretexts  which  may  always 
be  summoned  at  will,  may  use  its  power  to  create  obligations  from 
blank  paper,  and  to  force  from  the  people  a  loan  by  discretionary 
issues  of  currency  ?  In  opening  the  way  for  the  assumption  of  this 
privilege,  fellow  citizens,  you  not  only  give  to  the  Executive  the 
control  of  the  public  purse,  but  you  confer  upon  him  the  power  to 
fill  it  with  promises,  for  the  fulfillment  of  which  the  nation  itself  is 
mortgaged.  Should  some  future  President  aim  at  a  permanent 
grasp  upon  the  supreme  power,  he  could  use  your  promises  to  pay 
as  a  means  to  raise  and  support  his  legionaries  for  the  overthrow  of 
your  liberties. 

Nor  is  such  an  event  wholly  chimerical.  We  have  only  to  im- 
agine a  condition,  such  as  repudiation  and  bankruptcy  must  inev- 
itably produce,  an  utter  prostration  of  our  industries,  a  general  ar- 
rest of  productive  energy  in  all  parts  of  the  land,  the  discharge 
of  laborers  from  all  steady  employment,  and  added  to  this,  the 
peculiar  disposition  to  dependence  shown  by  certain  classes  of  our 
population,  both  North  and  South,  in  order  to  realize  that  the 
clamor  for  bread  may  cooperate  with  executive  ambition,  and  both 
together,  by  the  agency  of  a  depraved  but  convenient  financial 
system,  may  wreck  all  the  fair  and  fond  hopes  which  men  have 


14 

cherished  in  regard  to  the  future  destiny  of  the  Republic.  Such  is 
the  financial  danger ;  and  a  wise  people  should  be  warned  in  time 
and  resist  any  and  every  policy  which  should  make  it  even  remote- 
ly possible.  If  ever  our  nation  shall  be  called  upon  to  encounter 
the  Commune,  irredeemable  paper  money  will  be  revealed  in  close 
alliance  with  the  calamity,  if  indeed  it  shall  not  prove  to  have  been 
its  prominent  cause. 

FROM  COMMERCIAL  OBSTRUCTIONS. 

A  commercial  danger,  though  by  no  means  so  conspicuous,  has 
recently  seemed  to  menace  the  public  welfare  and  to  be  an  obsta- 
cle to  general  prosperity.  Monopoly  in  this  country  has  chiefly 
displayed  its  power  in  the  control  of  our  channels  of  internal  com- 
merce, and  has  created  justifiable  apprehensions  that  this  control 
might  become  a  permanent  popular  burden.  The  agricultural  pop- 
ulation of  the  Great  West  have  been  especially  solicitous  in  regard 
to  the  paralysis  which  it,  in  some  measure,  brings  upon  those 
mighty  industrial  forces  and  energies  which  are  so  rapidly  turning 
the  vast  interior  of  the  continent  into  an  area  of  the  highest  civili- 
zation. This  evil  is  one,  however,  which  the  people  will  soon  find 
a  method  to  remove  or  modify.  That  this  method  will  be  the 
opening  of  great  national  highways,  by  rail  or  by  water,  for  the 
transmission  of  the  immense  products  of  our  industry,  is  an  expec- 
tation too  reasonable  to  be  kept  within  the  limits  of  mere  con- 
jecture ;  and  many  of  the  most  practical  minds  of  the  nation  see  in 
this  plan  the  solution  of  a  difficulty  which,  it  must  be  acknowledged, 
has  not  yet  found  a  remedy.  Gigantic  aggregations  of  capital  have 
untold  means  of  political  corruption  and  national  mischief,  and 
warrant  a  prudent  restriction  of  their  movements  without,  however, 
repressing  legitimate  enterprise  or  invading  constitutional  rights. 
I  need  not  say  that  to  do  this  with  discriminating  wisdom  is  just 
now  an  imperative  demand  of  statesmanship. 

FROM  DEPOPULARIZING  EDUCATION. 

Still  another  question  is  suggestive  of  a  danger  whose  importance 
should  be  undervalued  by  no  one  who  calls  himself  an  American. 
By  the  side  of  purity  of  administration  and  financial  integrity 
should  stand  the  cause  of  popular  education.  When  these  three 
march  abreast  and  are  not  allowed  to  falter  in  their  step,  whatever 
else  may  come,  the  nation  is  safe.  Palsied,  then,  be  the  hand  that, 
under  any  pretext  or  from  any  motive,  religious  or  secular,  would 
attempt  to  depopularize  our  American  system  of  education,  and  to 
interrupt  the  usefulness  or  impair  the  efficiency  of  that  indispensa- 


•  ^5 

ble  instrument  and  safeguard  of  liberty  furnished  in  our  public 
schools.  If  sectarianism  can  force  us  to  relinquish  that  cardinal 
article  of  our  faith  that  causes  us  to  cling  to  the  common  school  as 
the  sheet  anchor  of  our  national  safety,  it  can  blot  from  our  mem- 
ories Plymouth  Rock,  and  every  other  remembrance  that  gives  sa- 
credness  to  our  history.  When  we  repudiate  our  ancestry  and 
throw  contempt  upon  American  institutions,  then,  but  not  till  then, 
will  we  abandon  the  idea  that  the  perpetuity  of  the  Republic  and  an 
unsectarian  system  of  public  education  are  inseparably  identified. 

THE  REPUBLIC  WILL  TRIUMPH. 

But,  fellow  citizens,  these  dangers  of  the  future  will  all  be  suc- 
cessfully encountered  and  overcome.  The  questions  incident  to 
our  national  development  will  find  a  prosperous  disposal  in  that 
popular  intelligence,  in  that  undeviating  patriotism,  in  that  auspi- 
cious foreboding  of  future  destiny,  which  are  so  clearly  the  inherit- 
ance of  the  American  people ;  and  more  than  all,  in  that  divine 
guidance  and  protection  which  have  brought  them  safely  through  the 
troubles  and  difficulties  of  the  period  of  organization.  The  watch- 
word of  our  fathers,  ^^Quitranstulit,  sustinet,'"  "He  that  has  brought 
us  through,  will  continue  to  sustain,"  is  still  the  ineffaceable  legend 
which  the  eye  of  patriotic  faith  descries  upon  our  national  banner. 
Our  real  perils,  as  one  after  the  other  they  are  met  and  conquered, 
will  be  transferred  to  the  list  of  false  alarms.  The  buccessive  con- 
tests through  which  the  Republic  is  called  to  pass,  will  only  add  to 
its  strength  and  enlarge  the  scope  of  its  beneficence.  The 
strifes  of  the  past  have  become  our  proudest  triumphs :  the  strifes 
of  the  future  will  bring  results  which  shall  be  an  equal  warrant  for 
national  pride. 

CONCLUSION. 

Let  this,  our  unfaltering  faith  in  the  final  success  of  the  Union, 
be  to  us  a  perpetual  inspiration.  This  faith  should  stir  within  us  a 
resolve  that  the  grandeur  of  our  citizenship  in  a  Republic  like  this, 
shall  never  fail  to  secure  from  us  a  corresponding  return  of  obliga- 
tion. Our  responsibility  is  measured  by  our  privilege ;  and  our 
sure  hope  that  failure  cannot  attend  our  effort,  should  nerve  us  to 
an  unremitting  and  conscientious  performance  of  every  patriotic 
and  public  duty. 

When  our  descendants  shall  pass  in  review  the  deeds  of  the  cen- 
tury on  whose  threshold  we  are  about  to  step,  let  them  be  able  to 
record  that  we  entered  upon  it  with  a  not  less  zeal  for  freedom  and 
aspiration  for  fraternity,  than  that  which  glowed  in  the  bosoms  of 
the  generation  which  laid  the  foundations  of  our  national  structure. 


i6 

Let  them  record  that  we,  with  perfect  union  and  with  patriotic 
fervor,  applied  ourselves  to  whatever  task  the  demands  of  the  time 
required  at  our  hands  j  and  let  it  be  our  praise  and  their  pride 
that  we  rightly  conceived  and  nobly  performed  our  part  in  trans- 
mitting, with  an  added  value,  the  inheritance  of  union  and  liber- 
ty which  we  have  received.  Thus  may  they,  in  their  turn,  as  well 
as  we,  take  up  the  glad  refrain  inspired  by  unwavering  faith  and 
hope,  and  shout  onward  to  the  coming  centuries,  with  exultation 
and  with  confidence, 

"GOD  SAVE  THE  REPUBLIC." 


THE  \Mmi  OF  THE 

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